Sugar Land Skeeters hope new manager Gaetti continues streak of success in new places

Gary Gaetti has a team to manage – at least in concept – for the first time in his baseball career. The Sugar Land Skeeters introduced Gaetti on Thursday as their first manager, and they’d be much obliged if he keeps intact his track record with new ventures and adventures.

Gaetti homered in the first at-bat of a major league playing career that spanned 20 seasons. He played in the first game in the Metrodome in 1982 and went 4-for-4 with two home runs. He was the first player in major league history to hit homers in his first two postseason at-bats and was instrumental in the Minnesota Twins winning their first World Series in 1987.

“What that tells you is this guy is a fast starter,” Sugar Land mayor James Thompson said. “You know where I’m going with this? Our expectations are pretty high.”

The Skeeters will begin play next April in the independent Atlantic League. There will be an expansion draft in early 2012, and Gaetti, 52, will be in charge of the baseball operations. The team reports it has already sold out the skyboxes for the under-construction Star Tex Power Field, which will boast a Texas-shaped, seven-story-tall scoreboard.

“I’m way excited to be standing up here,” Gaetti said. “My whole heart’s going to be in it.”

Gaetti played from 1981-2000, winning four Gold Gloves on top of accumulating 2,280 hits, 360 homers and 1,341 RBI. He was the hitting coach for the 2005 Astros team that went to the World Series and had been working as instructor for Baseball USA in Houston when the Skeeters made an offer he couldn’t bring himself to refuse.

“I’ve been asked this question a bunch of times: What’s your managerial style?” Gaetti said. “Well, cliché, cliché, cliché. How many clichés do you want to hear? I can consider myself old school. I played in that old-school era. I’ve coached in the I don’t know what you call this era – the steroid era, the new-age era, whatever. I guess I’d call it progressive. Or projective.”

Gaetti ranks 50th on the all-time list for games played (2,507, or four more than Babe Ruth) and is one of six third baseman in history to accumulate at least 350 home runs, 1,300 RBI and 2,200 hits. He played for six franchises under managers ranging from Tom Kelly to Buck Rodgers to Tony La Russa to Jim Riggleman. Nicknamed “The Rat” during his playing days, Gaetti considers himself a teacher at heart who is a stickler for details. He vows not to “take any crap,” to demand that his players bust it down the first-base line.

“Basically, I want a bunch of dirt-bag players is what I want,” Gaetti said. “The two words I came up with to describe what I’m thinking – don’t misunderstand me – are guerrilla warfare. Guerrilla tactics. Irregular warfare with harassment and raids and the element of surprise. I like how that sounds.

“The other one, and don’t misunderstand, is psychedelic. Not with regards to drugs, but in regard to expansion of the awareness. Even though there’s nothing new under the sun and nobody has any original ideas in baseball, I’m not going to stop thinking about it. New ways to win, new ways to train, new ways to motivate your players to do certain things.”

By Gaetti’s admission, he used to look down his nose at independent league baseball. Gaetti got a different perspective when his son Joe Gaetti played for the Atlantic League’s Lancaster (Pa.) Barnstormers last season. Joe Gaetti had reached Class AAA with the Rockies and A’s organizations without reaching the majors. The quality of play in the Atlantic League, Gary Gaetti said, is comparable to what he saw while coaching for the Class AAA Durham Bulls in 2007-08.

“I had no idea what it was about – none,” Gary Gaetti said. “I hadn’t really heard a lot of good things about it, but that’s just ignorance is what it was. I was shocked at the quality of the stadium, and I was shocked at the attendance. I’ve been at a lot of minor-league stadiums, and it wasn’t as nice or upbeat or positive.

“I don’t know what you’re expecting, but it’s going to be good. If you like good baseball and you like seeing guys who hustle … if you don’t hustle, we’ll see you later. That’s going to be one of the rules.”

As a player, Gaetti finished among the top 25 in the Most Valuable Player voting four times and made two All-Star team. Baseball Reference ranks him among to the top 10 third baseman in history in defensive runs saved.

“I didn’t play for statistics,” Gaetti said. “I played to win, because the beer always tasted better after you won.

“You know what the best moment of winning the World Series was? This may sound stupid, but after the final out of the World Series, when you’re jumping up and down and going crazy, the best moment was to say, `We did it.’ That was the best.”